"Don't Look Back"

My latest column takes on the burgeoning debate about whether living standards are going up or down and says it's the wrong debate -- centrist policy prescriptions are largely wrong even if you agree with their take on the history.

Comments

Matthew -- this font is even worse. It is just as crammed together, but tinier -- and Internet Explorer won't let me view it any larger (as usually works on other sites). Plus, it's still sans serif. No offense, but your blog is now one of the most unreadable blogs out there.

Posted by Anono | September 5, 2006 9:35 PM

In political terms it's much simpler. Many people have variable rate debt payment that are soaring due to higher interest rates, have been forced into lower paying jobs, are seeing their health care benefits go down and costs go up (if they even have health insurance), are facing rapidly increasing college tuition and have adult children who can't afford to live on their own.

The debate is wrongheaded because it focuses on buying power rather than common legitimate concerns and growing insecurity.

Posted by GregPStone | September 6, 2006 8:11 AM

Matt almost hits this one clear out of the park. I got to thinking about this during the ritual handwringing over the 'state of labor' last week.

Every year we hear the same thing- we need (an 8-hour day, a living wage, safe working conditions- take your pick) and labor needs to provide this by confronting business and forcing changes.

No- we need to provide this by passing a law and making changes that apply to everyone. When labor wins one contract, it helps in one place. When we pass a law, it helps everywhere and preserves a level playing field.

After 50 years of waiting for an 'invisible hand' to make business an enterprise that provides a better standard of living, it's time to realize it ain't gonna happen. Businesses provide products, and only someone totally devoid of spiritual values, such as a fundamentalist Christian, would confuse a material product with a value of human life.

Healthcare is a good example of this. Listen critically to the ads on tv today, and you'll see that healthcare, as an industry, has descended to the same moral shambles it represented a century ago. As someone who trained for a career in the industry, it turns my stomach. Everybody thought 'somebody else' would watch the moral boundaries, nobody did, and now businesses under misleading names use staffers dressed in deceptive clothing to sell products that probably don't work for problems you probably don't really have.

Take out the profit motive and you start to see what I saw taking a Medicaid patient to the clinic- if the doctor can't help, they tell you so, and if they can, they move directly to a trial treatment or referral.

Matt has stumbled on an important principle- it seems to be sailing right past his readership, but hopefully he will learn from and elaborate on this thought.

Posted by serial catowner | September 6, 2006 7:02 PM